Pandora Sykes is a podcast host, journalist and speaker, recognised for her work across a broad array of platforms.

You may know her as co-host of the wildly popular weekly culture podcast, The High Low, which she founded in 2017 with author and journalist, Dolly Alderton.


The pop-culture and current affairs podcast receives 200,000 downloads a week and has partnered with global brands including Google, Sainsbury’s and PANDORA jewellery.

With its finger firmly on the pulse, The High Low has been featured in Refinery29, Grazia, ELLE, The Observer and The FT. It was one of The Sunday Times Magazine’s Top 50 Podcasts of 2018. Guests on the show have included the best-selling authors, Tina Brown, Leila Slimani, Reni Eddo-Lodge and Fatima Bhutto.

As a journalist, Pandora has covered fashion, culture, lifestyle and mental health and interviewed multiple celebrities. She is currently a Contributing Editor at ELLE magazine and at Man Repeller.

She has written for titles including The Telegraph, The Guardian, Marie Claire, Vogue, Red, MATCHESFASHION.COM, Net-a-Porter’s The Edit, i-D, The Spectator and The Sunday Times.

These days, her main area of interest is women and the way they live: how they talk, what they read, how they vote, what they wear, what they love and what they hate. At the core of her writing and speaking is the ambition to make women feel less alone and more understood.

Early this year, Pandora crowd-funded her first non-fiction long-form essay, The Authentic Lie, published by the independent publisher, The Pound Project. The essay attracted more than 4,000 backers and raised over £32,000. It was published in digital and print editions in March.


She has hosted and spoken on multiple panels about topics that range from selfie-culture, brand-building, feminism, social media, trend-forecasting and the female gaze in art.

Pandora has collaborated with fashion brands including Warehouse, Matches Fashion, Uterque, Mango, Topshop, Cartier, Farfetch, Net-a-Porter, Estée Lauder, Burberry, Hunza G and Swarovski.

Pandora lives in London with her husband and young daughter. She has a killer smile, interiors to die for and 280,000 followers on Instagram. Her reach just gets wider and wider.

Here, the tastemaker shares with us a few of her favourite things online.

My favourite websites… BBC News for daily news and Net-a-Porter for daydreaming.

My favourite app… Weather

My favourite podcast… TBD with Tina Brown - During this hour-long weekly podcast, the legendary magazine editor discusses the cultural issues of the day with prominent actors, writers and thinkers.

blog of choice… I don’t read blogs regularly.

My internet hero… The American journalist and editor, Elaine Welteroth, because of what she did during her time at Teen Vogue. She turned Teen Vogue into an incisive, global platform interesting to all ages and not just to teenagers.

My most recent buy online… a dress from the Danish designer, Stine Goya.

The book I’ve just downloaded/read is... Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli - A beautiful novel about a family whose adventurous American road trip runs into trouble en route to the Mexican border, which was on the longlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019.

My favourite Tweeters (other than journalists)… Marina Hyde, Eva Wiseman, Hadley Freeman, Laura Snapes and many more!

My favourite Instagrammer is… Tank’s Good News @tanksgoodnews, whose platform is designed as a place where people can escape the toxic news cycle and read only positive stories.

Social media allowed me to meet… Leandra Medine - The US blogger who founded the fashion and lifestyle website, Man Repeller, which then meant I became a Contributing Editor on the site. So that was good.

Most worthwhile newsletter subscribed to… Conversations on Love by Red magazine’s Features Editor, Natasha Lunn - It is a bi-monthly email newsletter made up of candid interviews and personal essays on love.

My pet hate about life online is… Knee-jerk reactions.

If you liked reading this, then you might enjoy:

Our Guest Editors’ Favourites
A-Z of Websites for 2019
The Best Five Parenting Podcasts

June 2019

By Becky Ladenburg